By Elizabeth Dickinson

Parties
and voters, both unfamiliar with the new system that begins today with
an election, are struggling to find and agree on solutions to the
worsening economy

Reuters

TUNIS, Tunisia -- Soutlaya Beu Cheikh can
sum up Tunisian voters' priorities in just one word: "Vivre," she says
in French -- the ability to make a living. During the last three weeks,
she traveled on behalf of the Center of Arab Woman for Training and
Research throughout her native Tunisia's rural south, where she observed
the electoral campaign in the country's first ever democratic election.
She visited a diverse string of cities, industrial hubs, rural towns,
and villages. One thing, she says, was the same: "[Voters say] it's all
about lowering unemployment," she says. "The revolution starts now."

As
Tunisians go to the polls today, they vote to select more than 200
members of a Constituent Assembly, the next phase of the country's
democratic transition. That body will work to draft a new Constitution
and appoint a new government. They will set the rules of Tunisia's
future and set the tone for its development.

Yet over the last
three weeks of official campaigning, there has been surprisingly little
discussion about the single most important issue that analysts and
voters alike are thinking about: the economy. Instead, questions of
identity, women's rights, and the role of religion in the state have
dominated this campaign.

"The most important thing, which I'm not
sure a lot of the political parties have gotten is [the question of
the] economy, because that will sort out everything else," says Adel
Dajani, founder of International Maghreb Merchant Bank, the first such
outfit in the region. The economy, he argues, "will sort out questions
like the productive role of women. It's a very simple message, but I
haven't really seen any strong economic manifesto by any of the
parties."

On the eve of Tunisia's first democratic election, the
country got a painful reminder of just how necessary such economic plans
will be in the country's next stage of democratic transition. The World
Economic Forum's Arab Competitiveness Report saw the country dropping eight places
in a worldwide ranking of attractiveness for international investment,
something at which Tunisia had long excelled. Economic growth this year
is predicted to contract slightly or hover around zero. Net foreign
direct investment is also down to just a tenth of what it was in 2010 --
which accounts for the flight of some 900 billion dinars of capital
(about $633 billion).

Perhaps most potently, the unemployment rate
is soaring at 18.5 percent and may be as high as 30 percent among
university graduates, meaning that the same economic concerns that
inspired Tunisians to hit the streets in in early 2011 have actually
worsened, exacerbated by the months of political upheaval. "For me, it's
all about the recovery of employment," says Aziz Ben Sendrine, a voter
outside a mosque in central Tunis. "We are Muslims, and we should be
proud," he says of identity questions raised during the campaign. "But
there's no work."

Parties competing for votes in the Constituent
Assembly do have economic platforms on paper -- though they have
remained largely undiscussed and analysts worry that they rely on many
of the same tactics the previous regime had used. "If you look at
parties manifestos, with the exception of the far left parties, most
have the same economic objectives: to reduce unemployment and increase
infrastructure in interior," says Ayesha Sabavala, Tunisia analyst at
the Economist Intelligence Unit.

Those tactics were successful in
raising Tunisia's economic growth rate and other macroeconomic
indicators, but they left vast regional and societal inequalities
throughout Tunisia. The country's south, for example, has stagnated even
as the wealthier coast flourished.

To target such inequalities,
the current interim government released an economic plan in late
September, which is meant to guide efforts after the election -- though
there is no legal obligation for a new Tunisian government to follow it.
The plan calls for the creation of 300,000 emergency jobs to be created
to give the economy an immediate shock. It predicts reaching a growth
rate of 6.3 percent and calls for reductions in unemployment from its
current level -- at nearly a fifth of the population -- to between 10.5%
and 8.5% by 2016.

Achieving those goals would require immediate
government spending, financed by international credit, on things such as
infrastructure and high-tech services. The foreign minister announced
this fall, for example, that the government was seeking $125 billion in
loans from the World Bank and African Development Bank in the next five
years. The credit has so far been forthcoming
-- a fact that may even have cushioned the economic drop. The European
Union, for example, has promised to provide some $4 billion over the
coming three years. "Tunisia's economy has tanked recently and so it
needs an injection of money," says Michael Mann, a spokesman for the
EU-Tunisia Joint Task Force.

"The losses were not felt as strong
as they might have been because international credit has been very
generous," says Ahmed Ounnaies, a Tunisian diplomat who briefly served
as foreign minister in the first transitional government after the fall
of the ousted Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. He calls the debt the country has
taken on as "the price of revolution."

Exports to the European
Union -- which the African Development Bank reports make up 80 percent
of the country's outward trade -- could also help. So far, these have
held up in spite of the broader economic slump, argues Sabavala, though
she worries that the EU's own debt crisis could put the country's
recovery in jeopardy. Libya's emergence from revolution also bodes well
for Tunisia's economy, as the two have a long history of trade.
"Hopefully the Libyan economy will be able to pick up," Sabavala notes,
"The rebuilding offers opportunities to go back into Libya to find
jobs."

And Tunisia's fundamentals -- the things that have
historically made this country one of the region's top performers --
remain. "Tunisia is still well positioned with its proximity to EU and
also its access to Africa," explains Sabavala. "It has a highly educated
and young workforce and most speak at least two languages, Arabic and
French."

Still, the road to economic recovery will prove a
challenge -- and at least as important to Tunisia's future as the
politics that guide it. Dajani notes that businesses will be reluctant
to take decisions until they see a stable administration in place.
"Capitalism is a bit of a coward when it comes to things like that:
investors are waiting for political clarity."

Getting the clarity
couldn't be more urgent: the economy, perhaps more than anything else,
could be what determines whether Tunisia's revolution proceeds at all --
or whether the country's youth are inspired once again to the come to
the streets. Polling by Gallup's Abu Dhabi Center released
after the revolution shows of a fast-devolving economic situation in
the country prior to the January 14 revolution. Dalia Mogahed, director
of the center, now argues that "securing the revolution" is a question
of economic change.

So far, however, this hasn't dominated the
political conversation in more than a polemic way, analysts and
candidates alike admit. And when voters go to the polls, very few of
them are likely to have taken the time to find and read parties'
economic plans. They will have to vote on promises heard on the campaign
trail and trust in their candidates.

"There is incredible
sadness in Tunisia," says Abdelfattah Mourou, an independent candidate
running in Tunis. "[The political class] needs to come down to that
reality."